


Too slow for comprehension

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Justice League (2017)
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Barry Allen Needs a Hug, Barry Allen has ADHD, Canon Jewish Character, Developing Friendships, Flashbacks, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Picnics, Post-Justice League (2017), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protectiveness, Science Bros, Snacks & Snack Food, Speed Force, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:02:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22998130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Barry tried, he really did, but he knew that he could be a handful. Now that he had been blessed- cursed? The Jury was still out on that one- with the super speed that had somehow lead him to this new team, that had increased tenfold, and he was very aware that he could be annoying. But somehow, his team were doing a pretty good job of dealing with it, even if they all did have their individual ways.
Relationships: Barry Allen & Justice League
Comments: 9
Kudos: 258





	Too slow for comprehension

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not too happy with this one, but I really love the 2017 JL movie??? And Barry has my heart, so the fates compelled me to write this. I hope you enjoy it x
> 
> Also, the reason why Bruce is so understanding is that he's already had at least 2 Robin's in his life (Jason's suit was shown in the movie so we know he had at least Dick and Jason) so I think Bruce would know how to deal with hyperactive children. Dick was raised in a literal circus.

People were slow. Barry had found that after a lifetime of struggling, and that had only gotten worse after he had been hit by lightning and his entire being became one giant super-charged battery that just so happened to be the fastest thing alive. Or well, maybe the second fastest thing. He hadn’t been sure who had really won that latest race against Superman. He liked to think that it had been him, though.

His dad had always been good at trying to figure Barry out, at taking his time and trying to understand Barry and all his quirks for what they were, even when Barry sometimes got frustrated with himself for his impatience of his trouble focusing or understanding. His mother had been good with it too before she died. Was murdered. But not by his dad, no his mother died, was murdered, by a man like him, by a man wreathed in living electricity, with lightning that stung Barry from where he hid behind the wall, a man dressed in a yellow suit that looked a little bit like Barry’s scarlet one-

The team… tried. He thought. He hoped. He hadn’t ever really thought about it before and he most certainly hadn’t taken the time to ask them. But, from what he had been able to gather, they liked him well enough, right? They hadn’t threatened to get rid of him yet. Sure, Arthur had a bit of a temper, but Barry liked to think that it was all in good fun and that he wouldn’t actually feed him to his pet bull shark, but other than a few light-hearted jests, they were all friends, right? And friends… they put effort into each other, effort that Barry had never before been able to muster. Maybe that was why he had no friends.

* * *

It was no surprise to anyone, least of all to Barry, that Arthur wasn’t willing to indulge Barry and his impatience and his short attention span and his quirks. Not like the others would, at least. Not how Barry wished he would.

In fact, somehow, Barry had the hardest time trying to get through to Arthur. For some reason, every word that Barry uttered seemed to give him great pain, and Barry couldn’t for the life of him understand why. Like, he wasn’t that annoying, was he? He couldn’t be. His dad always said that he just took some getting used to, sure, but he wasn’t obnoxious. He was funny. There was a distinct difference.

Sometimes, Bary would find himself alone in the corner of Bruce’s Batcave, still not really believing that he was in the Batcave at all, and would be the middle of a giant pizza with extra cheese when Arthur would wonder over and steal a piece of Barry’s pizza and sit down on a crate full of probably dangerous materials and Barry would try not to mention how the pizza he was eating was a pizza he had paid for until one of them eventually spoke, and most often, it would be Arthur. “Raced any speeding bullets recently?”

“No, talked to any fish recently?” Barry said, and immediately winced. He hadn’t meant to say that. You’d think that someone who had so much time would think before they spoke, but Barry never seemed to remember that part. He didn’t talk to people much, so he didn’t really need to. “Sorry. Uh, slip of the tongue. No, I haven’t been racing any bullets, either saving people or shooting and running. I don’t… even know how that would work. Would I shoot the bullet and drop the gun, or would I take the gun with me? Which would save more time?”

Arthur was groaning before Barry had even finished speaking. “Sorry I asked.”

Licking his lips, Barry kicked his feet back and forth until his heels hit the crate he was on to echo through the box that obviously had to be empty, otherwise, Barry would probably be dead by now. “Look, man,” Barry began, rubbing at the back of his head. “I don’t know what I’ve done to get under your skin, but I don’t understand why you can’t stand me.”

Suprised, Arthur choked on his mouthful of pizza, and turned away to couch harshly into his hand before looking back to Barry, watching expectantly, the cheese slowly slipping off his deflating pizza and onto the cardboard box. “What? I don’t… what are you talking about?”

“It’s just that, you know,” Barry waved his hands about, foregoing the slice of pizza in his hand to enunciate his point more precisely. Though, really, he wasn’t too sure why he had to. If it was obvious to Barry, who barely had the time or the mental space to pay attention to it, then it definitely should have been obvious to the man who was actually doing it. “You try your best to stay away from me, and I mean, it’s working, because you’re big and scary and could probably toss me off a cliff without even trying so I kinda keep my distance, but you seem like, uh, you really don’t like me? Uh, kinda hate my guts kind of don’t like me? And I don’t know why or what I did to make you feel this way, and I’m not going to get mad at you about it and pick a fight I probably couldn’t win, but I just want to know why, you know? We’re supposed to be a team, and I understand that not everyone is going to get along all the time, but we talk about our problems with each other, right? Or am I… confusing this kind of team with a different one?” 

The silence that followed the end of his statement was not something that Barry had expected, but he waited those painfully long seconds for Arthur to answer and occupied himself with finishing his slice of pizza so he didn’t have to think about how long he had to wait. “I don’t hate you, Barry,” Arthur said eventually, looking anywhere but at Barry beside him and sounding less grumpy than Barry was used to. “It’s just that… I don’t know. You’re too much sometimes. It’s easier to stay distant and get little doses than it is to be with you every second of every day.”

“Oh,” Barry wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t that. “Right. Yeah, of course. Sorry.”

Sighing through his nose, Arthur looked around the room as if searching for someone to help him out of this situation. Barry looked around too, just to see if anyone was listening, and he noticed that Superman was standing very, very still nearby. “Listen. You’re a good kid. I like you. But sometimes it’s hard to deal with you when you’re always running around and speaking faster than I can understand. I’m not used to people like you. People like any of us. That dude over there dresses up like a damn bat to fight crime in the middle of the night. How weird is that?”

“Yeah, I uh, I guess that is pretty weird when you think about it in terms of like, logistics,” Barry said. “But to be fair, you also kind of dress up like a fish. The uh, the scales on your armour and the shark fins on your boots kina lend to a certain… aesthetic I suppose. Which is totally cool. I don’t have a gimmick except for being red and fast.”

Arthur laughed at that, a deep hearty chuckle that seemed to resonate in his chest and Barry thought that meant that he wasn’t going to get hit for another mention of fish. “Yeah, well, maybe that’s why everyone thinks I talk to fish. I suppose dressing up like one doesn’t help. But I don’t hate you, kid, you’re just… you’re a lot sometimes. And you know what? You’re too smart for me too. Always talking about how smart you are is a little bit annoying for us slow folk, you know? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I know that sometimes smart people can’t help talking about how great they are, but-”

“I don’t think I’m that smart,” Barry interrupted. Arthur looked at him with a raised eyebrow. This conversation had taken a turn that Barry wasn’t expecting. “When I say that ‘people are slow’ I don’t mean that ‘people are stupid’. I mean that every second of normal people’s lives is like an hour for me. I process things a lot quicker than other people. I move faster, I talk faster, I think faster. Yeah, sure, I built my suit and I know a lot about a lot and I work in a CSI tech lab, but I’m not the next Einstein or anything. It’s just that people are a lot harder to deal with when their whole existence is in slow motion. I just wish that people were just a little faster, or that I was a little slower. Or, maybe, instead of being slower, I could turn on and off how fast I am, but I just… can’t. And I’ve always struggled with focus and attention and patience, and it’s just gotten so much worse.”

Blinking, Arthur turned to face him fully now, “Oh,” he said. “I didn’t know that. I thought you meant that…”

“That I was the smartest dude to ever walk the earth?” Barry finished. “No, just that I’m the fastest dude to ever walk the earth, actually. But I can see how you could get confused.”

Laughing, Arthur reached over and clapped Barry on the back so hard that Barry actually rocked forward a bit, but he was so relieved that he wasn’t being punched in the face or thrown off a cliff or fed to a shark that he didn’t even register the pain. “You’re a good kid, Barry. Stay that way, huh?”

Barry laughed weakly and followed it up by a salute as Arthur slipped off the crate and snagged another slice of pizza. “I’ll do my best.”

* * *

He wasn’t surprised at all that Diana was the most indulgent when it came to his quirks. And she was the only one who could actually call them ‘quirks’ and not ‘problems’, not that the others would ever actually refer to them as ‘problems’. Not to his face, anyway.

She was kind. Kinder than most people he had ever met, really. She never seemed to tire of him. She tried to help him when she saw where he was lacking. She understood when he was struggling and she tried to keep up as much as she could. She didn’t keep her distance from him just because he was difficult. She was just the ever-present kindness that he needed.

Bonding was something both he and Diana had difficulty with. But unlike with Barry, who found taking the time to bond with people to be a harrowing experience for everyone involved, Diana was out of touch with society after shutting herself away for a century. But Diana was at an advantage over Barry, because she didn’t struggle with the speed of normal people and their slow, meaningless existence and could just _be_ without having to worry about whether she had missed anything. Barry, on the other hand, always felt like an outsider to the daily lives of others.

She had been trying to help him with his patience lately. Maybe not dealing with his absolute inability to comprehend the normal passage of time for those less gifted, but trying to work on the length of which he could go without losing his temper at how long he'd been waiting. So far, they'd managed to get up to 2 minutes. Which was 2 minutes in Diana's time, 6 minutes in Barry's. But Diana's favourite place to be, and an activity that Barry was starting to appreciate, was the central park having a picnic. 

It was a past time that Barry appreciated without question just because he could eat all the food he wanted at any time of the day without anyone asking questions or passing judgement. The world could end tomorrow and Barry would be content just because he was able to stuff his face with little cheeses and olives on toothpicks and crackers.

"So, Barry," Diana asked, leaning back on one hand and twirling a flute of champagne in the other with the air of someone who had repeated the same question many times before. "Have you come up with a name for yourself yet?"

"Uh, I've already got a name, and it's Bartholomew Henry Allen," Barry said around a mouthful of food. "It was given to me when I was born. I'm not quite sure why I would change it."

The laugh that Diana gave him was so sweet and genuine that Barry felt something flutter within his chest. It had been so long since anyone had laughed beside him in kindness and not at him in malice. “Are you really intent on running through the streets being known as Bartholomew?”

Barry occupied himself with his current cheese cube speared on his toothpick so he didn’t have to admit to her that he’d been trying to figure out a name for himself for what felt like decades and had never quite come across the perfect one. “I don’t know. ‘The very fast Jewish man named Bartholomew’ has a very nice ring to it.”

As she brought her flute to her lips, Diana looked towards the clouds, and Barry couldn’t help but wonder how she had stumbled across her name. ‘Wonder Woman’ was so oddly specific. “You are very funny. I don’t know how many people would recognize you by that name, or how long it will last.”

“Vic’s been calling me the Scarlet Speedster. And Arthur likes calling me the Crimson Comet. I think both of those are stupid, and I partially think that they're stupid on purpose,” Barry admitted and felt an appropriate coloured blush rise to his cheeks. “The names I’ve workshopped aren’t much better. I uh, I actually have a list,” Barry trailed off his last statement as he fished around in his pocket until his fingers closed around the crumpled paper. “Trans-visible man. Black Racer. Parallax. The Human Whirlwind. The Whiz Wizard. The Sultan of Speed. The Monarch of Motion. The Grand Vizier of Velocity-”

He cut himself off when he saw the look on Diana’s face. “Are those your only options? Because, I mean no offence, but-”

“They’re really bad, aren’t they?”

“They’re not the best, no.”

Sighing, Barry resisted the urge to finish off the cheese cubes and instead put his head in his hands with a groan. “I know, I know, I can do so much better, it’s just… ugh, it’s just hard to sit still for long enough to come up with something good, you know? A lot of these are phrases I half-remembered from seeing on TV. Even Vic and Arthur came up with better nicknames than me, and this is coming from a guy who calls himself ‘Aquaman’ but doesn’t talk to fish and a man named ‘Cyborg’ who might as well have called himself ‘the walking talking robot man’.” He ran a hand roughly down his face. “Sorry. It’s just so frustrating to be surrounded by people with such cool nicknames and then be the only one with nothing.”

Diana put down her flute and rested her side of her head on her hand, and looked at Barry with a curious expression, her hair cascading down to coil upon the ground. “Don’t worry. We all took the time to figure out which name best suits us. I have faith that you will find yours. You certainly have plenty of time,” she paused for a moment and looked him up and down. “How difficult is it for you to listen to me right now?”

There was no judgment in her words. Just curiosity. Barry wasn’t sure how to tell her that he had been struggling to listen to the words she was speaking and resist the urge to find something to fiddle with to draw his attention, which is what he had been doing with the cubed cheeses he was only eating to give his stationary body something else to do and he was only handing it because his fathers voice rang loud in the back of his head, _“I know it’s hard, Bear, but you need to show people respect, at least while they’re talking to you and only you”_ , and that every second that he sat still for was literal torture. Alright, maybe not literal torture, but was pretty close. “Uh… I guess you could say that yeah. Pretty hard, if I'm being totally honest with you. Yeah.”

And then Diana laughed again with a twinkle in her eye and all the negative feelings that Barry had towards admitting that were washed away.

* * *

The Batcave was one of the most amazing things that Barry had ever seen, with all it’s unusual things and technology and crazy designs that he could only ever dream of making, but the best thing about it, in Barry’s opinion, were all the nooks and crannies and special places to hide.

When the sluggish speed of life became too much to handle and he needed a few moments to himself to just… readjust, he retreated to one of his hidden little corners that he assumed Bruce and Alfred knew about but never actually found the need to tell them, and would just sit back and listen to the silence or his music or the thrumming vibrations of the Speed Force pouring through his veins like lightning through the trunk of an old tree.

There was a book by his side. Bruce had asked him to read it and give him his feedback on it, but Barry hadn't found the energy to flick through it first. Not that it mattered- he could read the whole book in less than a second if he really wanted to and no more than ten if he wanted to take his time. Absorbing words was difficult sometimes. He could read the words well enough, but remembering them and actually keeping them in his brain for any span of time was the hard part. Unless it was something Barry already knew or was interested in or understood to some degree, it was a lost cause. His mum used to say that his brain was hardwired differently to others, like a machine that was manufactured by a different scientist to everyone else and that his brain was one of a kind. 

Bruce… he tried to keep up with Barry. While Arthur avoided him and Diana talked him through it over a picnic, Bruce just accepted it. He accepted that Barry was erratic and excitable and fidgety and had a short attention span. He didn’t try to change it or tell him to be different. He just… let it happen. He was a big help when they went out into the field. He helped keep Barry on track when he forgot what he was supposed to be doing because he was too focused on being afraid, but Bruce just being there beside him, coaching him through and holding his hand helped him be less afraid. Barry liked to think that he was getting to be a better hero, but he couldn’t be too sure if it was true or just wishful thinking. He hoped it was true.

He was so bored, so he focused on drumming his fingers on his thighs and wiggling his toes in his shoes and resting his head on the cool back wall while he waited for the others to arrive. Barry was early. He was usually early.

It took him a while before Barry realized that someone was calling his name, and he opened his eyes and leant forward over the edge of his little hidden ledge so fast that it would have given a normal person whiplash, and looked down to the lower deck to see Bruce standing there without his cowl, looking around the room. “Yes?” he called, and his voice echoed through the cave.

Jumping a little, Bruce glanced up at him, squinting to see through the bright fluorescent light that bleared right into his eyes. “Oh, Barry, there you are. I’ve been looking for you for the last five minutes. Come down here, would you, and bring that book I asked you to read.”

Barry suddenly realized that he hadn’t read the book yet, and he quickly flicked through the pages before joining Bruce on the lower floor. He was beside him before the lightning and the wind followed him, an unfortunate side effect of his speed, and Bruce didn’t suppress his flinch as the crackling of the lightning beside his ear surprised him and made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.”

“Sorry, I can’t really control that.” Barry rubbed at the back of his neck, shuffling his feet idly as he stood in anticipation for an explanation as to his summons. There was a computer on the table, smaller than the other ones scattered around the lair but it thankfully sturdy enough to not go blowing about like the papers on the desk did when he arrived. “Uh, what did you need? Did you need anything at all or…?” 

There was a small, barely hidden smile on Bruce’s lips as he nodded towards the book Barry held loosely between his fingers. “Did you read the book?” Barry nodded. “Good. I hope you’ve familiarized yourself with the concepts?”

“Uh… yeah,” Barry frowned, trying to recount the things he had read just moments ago. “Statistical Mechanics and Special Relativity. I got it. I don’t know how you managed to find a book that involved both of those but I’m glad you did because the theories are kinda cool.”

Nodding, Bruce took off his gloves and powered up the computer. “Good. Now that you know what’s going on here, I’m going to need you to help me with this new idea I’ve been working on.”

It was almost as if Barry’s whole brain short-circuited and he froze on the spot, eyes wide and breath faltering in his chest. “M-my help? You want my help? _My_ help? Why me? Why not ask Vic or Superman or Alfred or any of the other guys to help you out? Why- why do you want me to help you? I mean, it’s not that I’m not honoured or anything, but like… why?”

Perplexed, Bruce turned to him with a curious look and he placed a hand on Barry’s shoulder. He was so shocked that Batman wanted his help that he almost couldn’t process the fact that Batman was _touching_ him. “Because you’re part of the team, Barry, and from what I’ve seen, you’re pretty intelligent and useful when it comes to things like this. You made your suit with the stuff they use for space shuttles and somehow managed to mould it into a wearable form that protects you and also doesn’t light on fire when you run. I think that you’re smarter than you’re willing to give yourself credit for. I also think you’re the right man for the job. So, if you’re willing, I’d like to ask for your help with this. If you’re not too busy.”

“Uh,” Barry tried, mouth dry. “Yeah. Yeah, sure. Whatever you need, no worries, of course.”

Smiling, Bruce squeezed Barry’s shoulder. “No rush though. Think of it as a side project,” he added, “Work on it when you feel the need or have the time, but there’s no deadline and no urgency, so you have no reason to feel like you have to rush. Can you do that for me, Barry?”

“Absolutely,” Barry said. “I would love to. I can… yes. I can do that for you.”

“I have an enormous amount of faith that you can.” Bruce smiled and Barry felt something warm flutter in his chest. It had been a long while since someone had said that to Barry, since before his dad was sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit, and he realized how dearly he needed to hear it.

* * *

The members of the Justice League, they all tried to cope with Barry and his quirks in their own special way, and from what Barry had noticed, Vic was having the most success. Though in his past life, Vic may have been a sports star, the jockiest of the jocks, his new life had given his old body the upgrades it needed to survive, replaced flesh with metal, veins with circuitry, muscle with gears and cogs, blood with electricity. He was the definition of a living, breathing machine. The old Vic, Barry never would have gotten along with, but this new Vic was the friend that Barry could only dream of having.

Imagine having unlimited access to any information anywhere on the internet, locked files, black market, CIA and FBI databases, even the password to hack into the most secure of Batman’s computers. It was everything Barry had ever wanted. Maybe not the black market and dark webs stuff, but a friend who would share in Barry’s interests even though the information meant nothing to them.

Vic was blessed with the ability many wanted to search the internet for anything and within less than a second be able to have that information despite never previously knowing of its existence. He could tell Barry the plot to a book that came out long before either of them were born or the entire concept of the Attraction-Selection-Attrition Framework. Barry didn’t even know what that was and Vic could recite it like he was reading it from a book despite Barry knowing for a fact that Vic had never known of the information prior to his transformation.

The scientist in Barry was fascinated. The human in Barry was just glad to have someone who he could call a friend that understood his interests, if only by the skin of his teeth.

But it was good, you know. Maybe no one could keep up with Barry in terms of his speed, but Vic could keep up in terms of intelligence, and that’s mostly all that Barry needed. Almost. It was too dangerous to see if they could fiddle with Vic’s circuitry to test whether he could understand Barry when he was jittery and speaking too fast for the normal ear to understand, but for now, Barry was willing to settle for just having a friend.

Eating was one of Barry’s many pastimes, and it was one of the things he could do without feeling the urge to speed it up at any point, so often while Vic performed routine upgrades on his biometrics or inspecting one of those 3D holograms that Barry was so fond of, Barry was usually eating.

This time, it was beautifully braided challah, golden brown on the outside and fluffy on the inside, and just how Barry liked it. He had ordered three from the baker closest to his warehouse, and though she had looked surprised, Barry had convinced her that he was throwing a party when in fact he was hoarding it all for himself, and he was curled up on one of the empty desks as Vic stood there looking over an orange hologram of a city block. “What are you looking at?” Barry asked through a mouthful of bread as he was already pulling off another fluffy piece.

“Just some schematics of the old Gotham underground. Nothing major,” Vic said as he dismissed the hologram and turned towards Barry. “What are you eating? I’ve never seen it before.”

“Challah,” Barry said as he offered a piece. “Want some?”

“Uh, no thanks,” Victor held a hand out and shook his head. Barry shrugged and put the piece in his mouth. “Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask you. What’s been bothering you lately? You’ve been pretty quiet, which with you is often cause for concern.”

Barry hadn’t noticed himself acting any differently, but it was that time of the year again, so maybe… “Nah, all good,” Barry laughed it off. “Must have just been having an off day. I’m all good.”

As Vic looked Barry up and down, he didn’t look convinced and Barry couldn’t blame him. It had been his lie and he couldn’t even convince himself. “Back at the Kent farm, when we were digging up Clark’s coffin,” he said. “You told me that you getting your powers by being hit by lightning was the uh… the ‘abridged’ version of that story. Do you feel like telling me the full version of it yet?”

The very last thing that Barry wanted to do was talk about the accident, the frustration he had felt at not getting his final sample exactly how he wanted it, the anger that drove him to move to the cabinet and smash the whole thing to the ground, the many liquids that lined the shelved sloshing out of their beakers and shattering glass across the floor, the bright flash outside his window from the distant storm before he realized that the storm wasn’t as distant as he had thought and the pain flared through him, burning his skin and frying his hair and making him collapse in a charred heap in the pool of unknown liquids he had smuggled from wherever he could, and with nobody there to help him, no parents, no friends, no supervision, he had laid there, curled up and shaking and passing out in intervals until morning came and he could drag himself to the closest hospital who would accept him while being consumed by the deep-seated knowledge that something was not quite right-

The sound of grating metal-on-metal pulled Barry from his thoughts and he blinked open his eyes to Vic snapping his fingers in front of Barry’s face. “Yo, Barry, what’s going on with you? You look like you’re having a panic attack. Not that I’ve actually seen someone have a panic attack before. It just looks like the images the mainframe gave me.”

“Nah, dude, I’m fine,” Barry pushed away Vic’s hand and put his challah aside, suddenly not hungry anymore. In fact, he felt very, very sick. “This isn’t a panic attack, this is just me remembering that I needed to talk to Arthur about getting myself a pet jellyfish. I’m fine, honest.”

“Not fine enough to tell me what just happened to you? Or the full reason for your powers?” Vic persisted with one raised eyebrow but Barry had the feeling that he already knew the answer.

“Not today,” Barry said, jumping from his perch and walking backwards away from Vic with his hands raised, leaving his challah behind. Vic didn’t move, even though he easily could have stopped him from leaving at the speed he was currently moving at, but to Barry’s relief, Vic stayed put. “Maybe some other time, though. And hey, if you want, you can have the rest of my bread- it’s really good.”

A soft look came over the human part of Vic’s face as he turned away, maybe to give Barry the needed privacy that was written on his face. “Thanks. I’ll give it a try.”

Vic may have been his closest friend for the time being, but Barry still wasn’t ready to share that story, not even with him.

* * *

Though sometimes it may have felt hopeless, and that on occasion he felt like the only person in the world, it wasn’t all bad. Especially considering the person on the team most capable of dealing with Barry and his quirks was Superman. Clark. Now that they were friends, Barry could call him by his real name and not by Superman, but the habit was hard to break.

They had already tested that Barry and Clark could race and stay relatively head-to-head throughout the whole thing where it got to the point that neither of them was sure who really won that race to the Pacific, so it wasn’t too strange to imagine that Clark could keep up with Barry in other ways as well.

Maybe Clark wasn’t as smart as Vic or kind as Diana or understanding as Bruce or jovial as Arthur, but he was Superman for gods sakes, and that meant that he had no trouble keeping up with Barry. And he was more than willing to indulge any question that Barry may have. Though, really, the questions Barry asked were mostly scientific questions that no normal person could ever hope to know. But Superman wasn’t a normal person.

“So,” Barry said in between catching the bouncy ball that he was throwing up and down while he laid on his back. “Like, the sun. What’s _that_ like? I mean, sure, it’s hot and all and I know what it does on earth, but what's it like in space? Have you uh, like, have you ever actually been to space?”

Superman- Clark- thought for a moment, tilting his head to the side. “I mean, it’s not much different. It’s very hot, so hot it’s almost cold. Like putting your hand in molten lava. I’ve never quite gotten close to it, but you can feel the heat from very far away. It’s very loud too, like a cross between a roaring beast and the crackling of flames. Normal people all the way here on earth can’t hear it because of the vacuum between us and the sun, but I can hear it. Over time, you learn to tune it out. But it’s not exactly what you people think it is.”

Excited, Barry rolled onto his stomach and rolled the ball between his palms. “And like, the stars? What do they look like? Are they any different than what we know down here?”

“They’re the same, I suppose,” Clark said. “They’re pretty formless, just big balls of shapeless gas just drifting up there. They’re very bright, almost like there’s something within them that lights them up from the inside.”

“Is the Milky Way really purple like all the pictures claim it is?”

“No, it’s white. While like… well, like milk. I suppose that’s why it’s called the Milky Way, huh?’

Barry was so excited that he could feel every atom in his body vibrating as he worked himself up and he got the familiar jitters he got whenever he lost control of himself, and tiny sparks of electricity burst from his person. Clark didn’t even flinch, his eyes were able to keep up with Barry’s position no matter how fast he was moving. “Right, wow. Gosh, I have so many questions you have no idea. Uh, this next one is a little personal, do you mind?”

“No, not at all,” Clark smiled, crossing his arms and floating over to where Barry was lying on the ground. “Ask away. I’ll answer as best I can.”

Sitting up, Barry ran his hands through his hair and then leant back against the wall, and moved his hands as he spoke, so excited that he hardly realized that he was doing it. “So, like with the kryptonite, how does that work? Because I know that it’s bad for you and all that, I’ve read Bruce’s essays on it and stuff, but how? Aren’t you from the planet Krypton? So how do pieces of your home planet almost kill you? It doesn’t just make you sick, it like, poisons you and weakens you and turns you into a normal person, almost. How does that _work_?”

Sighing, Clark floated to the ground and crossed his legs under him so he was sitting opposite to Barry on the ground. “It’s hard to explain to those who aren’t from my world. My planet- Krypton, as you know- was destroyed. Until recently, I thought I was the only one who survived when my parents sent me here. But when General Zod arrived on Earth a while back, he tried to turn this planet into a replica of Krypton with an old device that my people had designed for such an emergency. Back home, the population was full of normal, average every-day people, just like the humans here. The only difference between my world and this one is the material the planet was made from and the sun that it revolves around. Earth's yellow sun is what gives me my powers, something I didn’t have back home. Kryptonite is an offshoot, a mistake from Zod's terraforming technology, the World Engine. It's artificial. An accident. When he attempted to destroy this world and mould it into Krypton, something went wrong, and Kryptonite is what we are left with.”

“Oh,” Barry said. That wasn’t the answer he had been expecting. “Well in that case, maybe you had powers all along, and so did the rest of your people, but all the Kryptonite was just… you know. Taking it away from you until you were just normal.”

“That’s entirely possible,” Clark agreed. “I’ve never really thought about it that way before, and there’s not really anyone I could ask. But that’s a different way of thinking about it.”

“Woah,” Barry said. “Is there a way that, you know, you could change that? Like, get you used to Kryptonite again so that it can’t hurt you? Exposure therapy or something, in smaller doses, so it can’t be used against you? Like building up an immunity.”

Smiling, Clark looked at Barry with a tilted head and curious eyes. “You truly are an inquisitive one, aren’t you?”

Embarrassed, Barry rubbed at the back of his neck and looked away. “Yeah, I uh, I guess you could say that. Sometimes I just get carried away.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Clark said, standing up and clapping Barry on the shoulder. “I appreciate curiosity. I’d like to learn more about you, someday. You’re… interesting.”

Barry was so overwhelmed by the fact that Superman had just called him interesting that all he could do was sit there and splutter as Clark chuckled and walked away.

* * *

So what, maybe Barry was the worst to deal with at the best of times and that with his new super speed that just increased tenfold. Maybe he could stand to calm it down a bit and work on how annoying he knew he could be. Maybe he was just a lost cause, doomed to be impatient and absentminded and fidgety and hyperactive and irritable. Maybe everything the bullies from highschool claimed he was is true.

But his mother had told him just before she died that one day he would find a group of people who he could call friends and would understand him how he deserved, who would look after him when he needed it, who would take the time to learn how he worked and how his brain was different than others.

And if she were still alive today, he would tell her that he had found those people, and their collective team name was the Justice League, and they consisted of an alien, a merman, an amazon, a half-robot and a man who dresses up like a giant bat, and that they were the best of friends that Barry could ever wish for, even though they all dealt with Barry and his unusual persona in different ways. He loved them all the same.

**Author's Note:**

> (Also, those names that Barry gives in the segment with Diana are actually names he went by in the comics before he was the Flash, just FYI, so you guys don't think I'm crazy)


End file.
